


For better or for worse

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X files, The X-Files Revival - Fandom
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was never going to end. This loop they were stuck in. They never seemed to be able to break from the darkness and into the light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For better or for worse

He stood at the door to the ICU. His suit, his expression, the slight sag of his shoulders, the furrow in his forehead, deepened by time. Something shifted inside her. They’d been in situations like this too many times in too many past lives. She sighed as she slipped her phone into her pocket. It was never going to end. This loop they were stuck in. They never seemed to be able to break from the darkness and into the light.

There’d been a case once, one that had affected Mulder deeply, that drew them to the nexus of past and current lives. As she pressed the green button to open the door, Scully wondered if that had been their one chance to get off the circuit.

She looked back at the fragile figure of her mother under the starched sheet. Scully had sat in the chair holding her hand for hours. She deserved the break. That’s what she was still telling herself as she let Mulder lead her to the cafeteria. When he placed his hand at the small of her back, she felt that shift again. A stray thought flittered through her mind: perhaps she was never destined to get off the circuit.

The table was covered in sugar crystals that spread out between them like unspoken thoughts and unvoiced arguments from these past years. He’d bought her coffee. Always the gentleman, Mulder. Whatever insults they’d cut each other with, however long their wounds had bled, however brittle their relationship had become, he couldn’t help being him. He’d always been true to himself and to his cause. Even in the orange jumpsuit with cuts on his face, he had told her the truth was bigger than them. What she’d learnt recently was that it still is.

She stabbed at the sugar with her fingers. They trembled. Fatigue. Guilt. She couldn’t tell anymore.

“How is she?” His gravelly voice set the question as serious yet caring. He still had that ability. Questioning the most brutal killers or the vaguest witnesses, he could frame ordinary words with such compassion that confessions and memories slipped out unbidden. She didn’t dare look in his eyes though.

Doctor Scully took over. “The prognosis is…”

He covered her hands with his. Warmth, familiarity, comfort. Whatever it was, it worked. She sighed. “It’s just a matter of time.” Her throat dried.

He tilted her chin to force eye contact. She blinked back tears. “I’m sorry, Scully.”

“I know, Mulder. It’s fine.”

“No. It’s not. Nothing is fine when you lose a parent.”

His statement surprised her, given the precarious relationship with his own parents. “She’s old and after the minor attack two years ago, this was almost inevitable.” A tear slipped down her cheek.

He took a sip of coffee. “But it still isn’t okay. And you don’t have to do this alone.”

“Bill’s on his way.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Mulder…”

“Drink your coffee. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

 

***

 

Her mother had called to say she felt unwell and that she should probably go see the doctor after they had lunch.

“I’ll drive you now, if you want me to, Mom.”

“I’m fine to eat first, Dana. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

When Scully picked her up, she looked grey and the taut line of her jaw raised Scully’s hackles. She should have taken her to the clinic there and then. Shouldn’t have lingered over the menu so much. Shouldn’t have let her mother have that second cup of tea. Shouldn’t have listened as she asked pointed questions about Fox and his state of mind.

“When was the last time you sat with him, really listened to him, Dana?”

“Mom.”

“He’s been ill, Dana. But he’s not broken.”

She chuffed at that, looking down at the fingers of her left hand. “It’s not him that’s broken, Mom. And, I don’t know that he wants to be fixed. And even if he did, I know I’m not the one he wants to fix him.”

“You’ve always been the stronger one. Sometimes you have to ride out the wave.”

“The wave has been building for twenty years, Mom, with no sign of slowing down. I think I deserve to get off, don’t you? Besides, now he’s back at the FBI, he’s doing much better.” She watched a couple on another table kiss over the top of their plates. The woman was pink-cheeked and smiling at the ring on her finger.

“And you? Now that you’re back there too?”

“I’m fine, mom.”

“Of course you are,” she said, smiling. “You’ve given up a lot to follow him again.”

Scully tucked her chin down to her chest. “It was my decision.”

“It must have been a convincing argument. It seemed to come so out of the blue.”

And she still woke up and convinced herself every morning. “Mom, I can’t talk about this now.” She sipped her tea. Steadied her breathing.

“Well, I’m sure you and Fox weighed up all the pros and cons. But, Dana, whether he’s fully recovered or not, I’ve a feeling that he’ll always appreciate your help.”

“Mom, you know as well as I do that Mulder has always been disinclined to accept my help. Anybody’s help. He’s impossible when he’s like that.”

Maggie offered her a raised eyebrow. “You were always more alike than you cared to admit, Dana.”

Two waiters approached the couple at the other table, smiling and clapping. Maggie turned her head to follow Scully’s gaze. “I think they’ve just got engaged.”

“How wonderful.” Maggie beamed at Dana. “Perhaps we should…” She drew a sharp breath that Scully recognised in an instant as acute pain. The ambulance couldn’t come quick enough.

 

He sat with her in ICU until morning. She’d nodded off in the chair and came to with a stiff neck and a resettling of the gnawing pain in her guts. Her mother on one side of her. Mulder on the other. The grit in her eyes and the gristle in her shoulders told her it was time to head home for a shower. She could use the cleansing.

“I’m glad you were with her when it happened, Scully. That makes it feel…” he searched her face as though she could provide him with the words, “easier to bear. As though it were fated.”

No. Nothing so trite. “A coincidence of timing, Mulder, that’s all. Perhaps if I wasn’t there she wouldn’t be hooked up like this. Clinging on.”

He frowned and leant towards her. “Would that have been easier for you to bear?”

She couldn’t answer. She got her jacket and slipped it on. He just watched her. “Before it happened we saw a couple at the restaurant, they’d just got engaged. Mom was wearing that beatific smile she had, the one she retained for the moments in life that she placed great value in: births, weddings, family occasions, you know?” She walked to the door. “It’s easier for me to bear when I think of that smile.”

“I remember it well, Scully.” He walked out with her.

***

A week after the funeral, Scully was cleaning out her cupboards. It wasn’t taking as long as she’d have liked. But the scrubbing was cathartic, keeping her mind from the bullpen and this strangely familiar life she’d chosen to step back into. Suits and guns and phones and younger, sharper minds who question her credentials and her recent assignment, out of the blue, and of course, her history with Spooky Mulder.

She kept the apartment in immaculate condition. No seeds scattered from half-opened packets, no out-of-date jars and tins, no pasta – she didn’t eat carbs much anymore. The last time she ate lasagne was when…She heard her phone bleep and then the knock at the door. Only Mulder could annoy her twice in such rapid succession.

He handed her a potted miniature rose and settled for a kiss on her cheek when she half-turned away from him.

“It’ll be dead within a week, Mulder.”

“You know Scully, it’s amazing to me that someone who practised in paediatric surgery can kill small living things with such abandon.” He shot her one of his dazzling smiles. She folded her own back inside her. She couldn’t deal with happy Mulder right now. It was always harder to navigate than his down moods.

“What do you want?”

He sat on her chair. Her chair. The rankle of irritation gurgled in the base of her throat.

“To see you. To talk.”

“We see each other at work now, Mulder…”

“No, Scully, hear me out. This thing, this new conspiracy. The FBI. Us. It’s all coming together. I’m feeling good. I want to get up in the morning. I want to go to work. It’s like the mud is drying up from around me and flaking away so that I can move again.”

She flicked on the kettle. “I’m pleased for you.” And she meant it. It just came out blunt.

He tugged at his tie knot. “Just for me?”

“What do you want me to say, Mulder?”

“More than just that you’re pleased. Hell, Scully, isn’t this what the damned therapy was heading towards? To get me back up to the surface? To get me functioning again? I’d like you to appreciate what we’ve got here.” He put his hands on his hips.

She pushed her nails into her palms, relishing the sharpness. How dare he come over to HER apartment, sit in HER chair, drinking HER coffee, a week after she buried HER mother and talk about the way SHE should be feeling.

Trying to compose herself took some effort. She looked at the marks on her hands. “I’m not saying that your recovery isn’t what I’ve been hoping for or that finding motivation in the X-Files is a bad thing. But, Mulder, haven’t we been there, done that, already? It seems to me that we spent years of our lives, perhaps our best years, working on your motivations, exposing one conspiracy after another, only to find that none of it was the truth you were looking for. The abductions, that constant fear. You went to jail. I aided in your escape. Our son, Mulder. Our son,” she turned her head away from him, bit back the tears. “And these new people we’re working with, they know about us. I’ve heard them, the gossip, the whispers. Oh, I’m sure they’ll do their best out in the field, but they’ll never be as invested in this work as us. I’m worried that we’re jumping straight back in with our eyes closed. Straight back on the very circuit that we spent so long trying to get off.” She threw her hands up as he opened her mouth. “It’s hard for me, Mulder. I’ve taken a huge gamble here. So you don’t get to come here with an ‘I want to see you’ line. I won’t be used as an emotional crutch. That’s not how it works this time.”

He pushed himself up and walked to her, invading her space, using his height to his advantage, his voice a low rumble. “That’s not what I’m doing, Scully. And you know it. This isn’t about other people’s opinions. This is about you and me. We are who we are because of everything we went through. You once said you wouldn’t change a single day. Would you be that bold now? All we went through back then, those events joined us together, Scully. But everything since the Father Joe case, the depression.” He rubbed his forehead. “You diagnosed me but you couldn’t fix me And you hate that you failed.”

She folded her arms. “You didn’t want to be fixed.”

“And you couldn’t wait to leave.”

That stung. She sucked in a breath. He edged back a little. He knew he’d crossed the line.

She pushed past him and sat in her chair. A headache was brewing. She rubbed her temples. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Then help me understand what’s happening here, Scully. I thought you wanted me to move forward. And being back in this suit, with the things we’ve learned now. That’s what I’m doing. But I need you with me.”

“Mulder, despite what you believe, your health and wellbeing have always been important to me, and I think you know by now that it was also the reason I had to get out of the darkness. Not because of Father Joe, but because of what you were doing to yourself. If I had stayed, you would have dragged me so far down that I couldn’t have climbed out.”

He nodded, compassion clouding his eyes.

“And Mulder, I also think you know that the answers we might find now will lead us back down that path. I’m frightened.”

His jaw flexed. “I understand, but I need to know that you’re with me on this, you’ll be by my side, wherever it takes us.” He walked towards her and took her hands in his, rubbing her fingers with his gentle touch. “And that means seeing you like this, outside of work, running through ideas and…just talking. Like we used to.”

She exhaled. She remembered those days. The ease with which they’d shared space and time, expounding ridiculous theories, trying to one-up each other. His out there ideas, her considered, logical rebuttals. But something had gone wrong. After the Father Joe case, after their promises to each other, they hadn’t been able to banter anymore. Back then they still believed the invasion was coming. She knew it was hopeless to fight. He couldn’t sit back and do nothing.

That’s when the darkness opened its jaws again.

She’d spent a long time climbing out from those depths, spent too long on a treadmill pulling herself up and then allowing herself to fall back down to him. She felt like she’d spent the final year in the house hammering and scratching at the trap door that forced her under for so long that her hands were shredded raw.

He took the rose and ran it under the faucet before finding a saucer and placing it on the counter above the sink. “This will need light to thrive.”

***

The case had been bizarre and gruelling. She scolded herself for feeling so out of touch. What could she have reasonably expected? Until a few months ago monsters and Were-Lizards were tabloid headlines. She hadn’t envisaged a life where she would chase them again. With Mulder. But despite her need to process, her feeling that the illogical and the ghoulish and the downright scary could be rationalised and represented in some report to be filed away under ‘sensible’, she found her fingers kept sticking on the keys. What could she write? How could she conclude? What could she possibly demonstrate in evidence that wouldn’t make her sound as crazy as him? As she stretched the kinks out of her back she mused that perhaps it didn’t really matter. That she was as crazy as him. This whole thing was crazy. Being back here, for real, chasing the truth dressed up as Halloween nightmares.

She conceded that the only thing that made crazy bearable this time round was that they were pursuing answers about their son. And perhaps, that she was pursuing them with Mulder. She was back on the circuit. For better or for worse.

Her phone bleeped. “Scully, it’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“Home. Can you come by?”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re here.”

Of course he would.

 

The house yawned open from the dried out yard. Despite being gainfully unemployed for many years, the projects she and Mulder had talked about never came to fruition. Whilst the wooden steps to the door silvered and bent, and the flyscreen tore and the roof sagged, he sat in his office reading and clipping and whatever else he did to pass the time. Whilst the washing stayed in the machine and the plates sat in the sink and the shopping went undone, she worked.

Today, he was sitting at the wooden table in the living area surrounded by files and cuttings and dirty mugs. She’d spent years picking up the clutter, rubbing away the coffee rings from the tabletop, taking folders back to his study. She’d tried to maintain an air of neatness in the lounge and the bedroom at least. But it had become a never-ending, demoralising circle.  
He acknowledged her with a rising hand but his eyes didn’t leave the paperwork in front of him. She did note the smell of garlic cooking and she took in a sharp breath, trying to erase the memory that had wafted into her mind as the aroma wafted through her nostrils. She could see that last day as clear as ever in her mind.

***

It was a Tuesday afternoon. She’d come home early to cook a decent meal. It had become a weekly ritual. One that she recognised now as a way to control her own spiralling frustration at Mulder’s loosening grip on his mental health. It was a way to see him dressed to sit at the table, to see him eat, to try to talk to him, to tease out more than a few words from him. She always brought flowers home. Always a bright arrangement to set the table with. This time she’d forgotten and the ones from the last week were wilted and brown petals had scattered around the glass vase, curling at the edges.

The lasagne was her mother’s recipe, pungent with basil and garlic, the bechamel bubbling and golden. The green salad was crisp and lightly dressed. She poured two glasses of an Australian shiraz. He didn’t answer when she called him. She went to the study. He was sitting in his chair, facing away from the door, hunched over the back desk. A scraping noise, faint but rhythmical caught her attention. As she moved towards him she looked up. The ceiling was empty of pencils. Mulder was sharpening them all into curled piles on the desk. Some of the spirals had dropped to the floor, but she only realised when she was standing in them. Flinty grey speckles scattered across the wooden boards. He was oblivious, continuing his mechanical whittling.

“Mulder, dinner is ready.”

Nothing.

She reached a hand to his shoulder. He remained motionless.

“Mulder. It’s me.” She knelt by his side and looked up at his face. He didn’t stop sharpening the pencils. She took the one he was holding, slipping it out of his grasp and dislodging the small sharpener as she did so. He blinked, then focused on her face.

“Dinner’s ready, Mulder.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You need to eat.”

He turned away.

“Mulder, what are you doing here? The pencils?”

“They were blunt. I couldn’t draw with them.”

She looked at the dozens of points left on the desk and floor. “You need to come with me.” She put her arm under his elbow. “I’ve made lasagne.”

“Do you think William likes lasagne?”

The question forced the air out of her lungs. “What?”

“William. What do you think he likes to eat? We should find out before he comes home.”

“Mulder, William is not coming home.” She tried to keep her voice even but there was a catch as she said their son’s name.

“He’s coming. He’s told me. But you’ve given up on him again. He knows.” It was such a throwaway line, dropped casually as she stood pinned to the floor.

She mentally ran through the catalogue of responses to what was clearly a major mental breakdown in the throes. “I think you should come to the dining room.” She held out her hand but the look he gave her made her withdraw it and she wrapped it round her abdomen.

“You have a nasty habit of doing that, Scully. Of giving up. Of walking away.”

“Mulder…”

“It would be so much easier for you to just turn around now and leave, wouldn’t it? I mean, you have this whole other life out there, with your colleagues and your hospital board and your patients and their families and your conferences. You even have your own escape room, a nice little pad with a view to die for. I don’t even know why you’re still here. You gave up William just like that so what’s keeping you from giving me up, Scully?”

Her jaw snapped open but there was nothing there, no sound, no way of connecting the swirling mass of thoughts in her brain to her vocal chords. She knew she would never be able to articulate a cogent answer to his rant anyway. Shouldn’t respond. Not whilst he was in this state. A stray tear betrayed her and he stood up, pushing the chair back until it clattered over, skittering pencil shavings across the floor.

“Why are you still here?” He grabbed a fistful of papers and launched them into mid-air.

“Stop this, Mulder. Please. You need to calm down. We can talk.”

He laughed. “We’ve never been good at talking, Scully. You skirt around the edges of everything and I’ve never been able to get past your dances. And every time I brought up our son you shut me down with some bullshit about having no choice. Well, you know what I heard every time you said that? Mulder, it was all your fault.”

She chewed her lower lip. “I did what I had to do. At the time there was no choice. You know that, Mulder…”

“I’ve had a long time to process this now and you know what’s funny?” He paused for her answer. She gave none. “I actually thought that I could stop the invasion and save him. Save our son. Did you know that? It’s what really kept me going. Not the truth. Not you. Not us. But him.”

His words were a fury of spit and venom. She moved back to the door.

“And then nothing happened. I didn’t save him then. And I still haven’t saved him now. And you, with your new life, you don’t seem to care anymore, Scully. You switched off your feelings and you got on with your life. You’re so proficient at running away that you’ve eliminated his very existence from your mind.”

“No Mulder, that’s not true. Please, stop this. I need you to calm down.” She held out her hands as a peace offering and despite the desperate need she felt to get out of the room she knew she couldn’t leave him. She tried to look away so as not to antagonise him further. But he grabbed her wrist, squeezing it. She saw the glint in his eyes; he was relishing her pain. She felt a knot of fear ball in her stomach and her breath dried in her throat. This wreckless Mulder was someone she’d seen before. With a gun aimed at his own head or one aimed at her.

“Do you know what day it is today?” His voice drove through her, harsh.

She knew. How could she forget? Did he really think she would have erased William’s birthday from her heart? “Yes.” Her reply was a faint whisper.

He lifted her arm so it was bent up between them. She could feel his heart hammering. His breath was hot on her face. His eyes bright with rage. “Now you leave.”

“I’m not going, Mulder.”

“Leave. Then the date can be marked in our life calendar as a beginning and an end.”

“You’re not well. Let me help you. We can work it out together.” He twisted her wrist, the burn bringing tears to her eyes. “You’re scaring me, Mulder.”

Her hot tears dropped between them, falling onto the skin of his arm, snaking through the dark hairs. She watched his face as he blinked again, looking down at the droplets as they skimmed down and fell to the floor with the shavings. He let go of her wrist, looked briefly at her face, then crumpled to all fours heaving out huge, wracking sobs.

She visited him in the ward every morning and evening. The medication made him sluggish and disinterested. She read him books, got him an iPod loaded with his favourite albums, took him pencils and sketchbooks, sat with him as he stared out the window at the pretty garden outside. During those months, when he mostly ignored her, she liked to imagine that beyond the walls of the hospital out there in the other world, there were people who laughed and loved and remembered good times and turned up late for work and argued with their spouses and paid their speeding fines and ate cornflakes every morning and wore ill-fitting clothes and didn’t mourn their entire families and curse secret conspiracies and miss their lost children so much their bones hurt.  
Her bones still hurt. Every day.

***

She sat at the table opposite him now and watched as he read, his eyes flitting across the words, his lips moving slightly, his breathing even. No doubt his brain was processing the nuances and undercurrents of whatever it was he was studying. On the table was a miniature rose, the same colour as the one he’d given her. His plant was budding, its leaves vibrant green. The soil looked moist and rich. She felt a stab of guilt when she realised she couldn’t recall the last time she’d watered hers.

He put the page down and glanced up at her. His face relaxed into a smile. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, and looked down at the paperwork. “Another case?”

He shook his head and gathered the pages, straightening them by banging the edges on the table, then slotted them into a yellow folder. “I’m glad you came.”

“You asked me. I figured it was something important.”

“It is. It has been…something I’ve been working towards for a long time. Something personal. I…” He ran a hand through his hair.

“Just start at the beginning, Mulder.” She wanted to add, it’s just me, but she knew that would sound trite and perhaps insincere at this stage of their relationship. If that was the word for whatever it was they had now.

He chuckled. “Start at the beginning. Is that when you knocked at my door with your rabid logic and bad taste in suits or when those men abducted my sister or when they corrupted my father? Which beginning, Scully?”

She shifted in her seat. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, I’m a miserable drunk, but then you know that.” He took a deep breath. “Scully, I’m sorry for everything I said and or didn’t say and everything I did and or didn’t do. And this,” he nodded to her suit. “I know I pushed you into this, into coming back. I didn’t give you a choice.” He reached over and took her hands in his. He was shaking and his skin was warm. “What I said about needing you, that still stands. I do. But I don’t want you to be here if you aren’t fully invested. I saw how you were out there in the field. I could see half of you loved it but the other half was horrified.”

“Mulder, I don’t know how many times we’ve had this discussion, but I make my own decisions. And I don’t need your apologies. This is my life, my choice.” She squeezed his hands. If nothing else, these last few months working together had reminded her of how their individual strengths increased exponentially and their individual weaknesses dissolved when they worked as a team. It had also softened the pain of the past few years.

He stared at her, eyes drilling her. “But I didn’t appreciate how tough it was for you back then. These past few months, working with you, have given me that clarity. I took you for granted. Imagined you would be there forever. Even when I made it impossible for you to stay. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

She smiled. “There’s nothing to forgive.” And she actually meant it.

He chuffed. “Then you’re more of a saint than I realised.”

“I’m no saint, Mulder. And for the record, you were wrong about one thing. Going into the field. Yes, I was horrified. But only at how easy it was for me to get back into the work again. It’s like the past fifteen years have melted away.”

He patted his stomach. “Well, for you maybe they have, but some of us are a little more solid, and a jot slower, than they used to be.”

He still looked good in his suits. And she knew he worked out. She couldn’t help but notice. “What are you cooking, Mulder? It smells delicious.”

“I made lasagne, Scully.” He stood up, chewed his bottom lip. “Would you join me for dinner?” Something skittered in her stomach. “It’s okay if you have other plans. I’ll invite all my other friends round instead.”

He offered her a lopsided grin. She couldn’t say no to that.

***

When he came home from the hospital she knew he would struggle living in the house. It was too big, too full of unsaid things, constant reminders of their lives before. She installed him in her apartment. He was a slob and all the more obvious in the confined space. But he was still Mulder, in essence. He still took his medication. He still rubbed his hands over his face instead of sharing his thoughts with her, he still jogged instead of sleeping. He disappeared sometimes, for hours at a time. She knew it would take time to get him back on track. That it would take their combined efforts. She questioned whether she had the tenacity. Every single day.

The day it all changed was ordinary. Grey and dull, midweek, paperwork and meetings at work, a salad sandwich that lacked zing for lunch. She was actually looking forward to going home, to tidying up Mulder’s messy piles of newspapers or wiping the crumbs from the bench-top in the kitchen.

“Mulder?” The place was stark silent. She looked in the bathroom and the bedroom. She checked the jotter by the phone for messages. She tapped call on her cell. “Mulder, it’s me. Where are you?” She tried to keep it light. “I was hoping you’d be back for dinner. Call me.”

He didn’t.

She found him at the house, sitting in the dark.

“Why are you here, Mulder?”

“I live here.”

“I’m worried about you being…”

“Being what, Scully? Alone, isolated? Isn’t that what I’ve always been? You can’t have forgotten the basement already.”

She turned on the lamp next to the couch. The soft yellow glow it cast highlighted the length of his hair, the grey stubble, the gaunt outline of his cheekbones. Surrounding him were sheets of paper, scattered along the floor and over the cushions.“You’ve been doing so well lately.”

“Your apartment is too sterile. It’s just you watching me surrounded by chrome and Italian tiles. I don’t want to live like that anymore.”

“I can’t stay here, Mulder.”

He turned to her then, his eyes searching her face for a reason. A reason she couldn’t articulate yet. She just knew in her bones that if she stayed at the house it would spell the end. “So, you’re leaving me.”

A year ago, Dr Scully would never have considered leaving to be the best option. But she knew now that staying was worse. “I suppose one could argue that you’re leaving me.”

He barked out a laugh. “Seems like old times. He said, she said.”

“Mulder, I don’t think us being together here will help anything. It’s this place…”

“It’s too full of memories?” He drilled her with an accusing stare.

She looked down, defeated.

“That’s the difference between you and me, Scully. You can’t look back, you’re afraid to. But I only see the past as a way of looking forward. I need to be here. I need the memories. They’re what keep me going.”

“Fine.” She turned to leave. “I’ll call you.”

 

The lasagne was cooked perfectly. The wine made her head buzz. She air between them was soft and filled with affection. She knew the alcohol was choosing nostalgia over pragmatism but she was enjoying it all the same.

“There’s something else I need to show you, Scully.” He cast a swift glance at her then pulled his chin down, coy almost.

She dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “What is it?” Her voice was a thin whisper, barely containing the sudden nervousness she felt prickling over her skin.

He stood up and walked towards the office. “Come with me.”

She followed. She hadn’t been in his den for a long time. It scared her, opening her memory to those dark days.  
He must have sensed her hesitation. He turned and held out a hand to her. She clasped his with her left and he rubbed her fingers. “I know this is hard, Scully.”

***

She checked in on him every day at first, then he changed the locks and forced her to wait on the step. Like an outsider. She felt him slipping away with every unanswered knock.

When he did let her in she made sure he was going to his appointments, she tidied the kitchen out of habit, she even took a bag of laundry once in a while. He griped about never being able to find this tee-shirt or those jeans, about her buying the wrong soap or the wrong brand of cereal. He never seemed to be doing anything other than hunched over his desk in the office or sitting in the dark.

He made her wait in the cold. By the time he let her in she was frozen to the marrow and struggling to contain her rising irritation. She looked around the room, each surface crammed with notes and pens and books, playing cards scattered across the coffee table, a couple of laptops holding up a pile of magazines. The peace lily her mother had given them years before was dried out and brown.

“I just came round to tell you that I have to go away for a week soon, Mulder. There’s a conference.”

“I’ll be fine, Scully.”

“I just wanted you to know.”

“I’m a big boy. I can look after myself.” When he rubbed his face she noticed he wasn’t wearing his ring.

“I’ll leave the details of the hotel on your desk, okay?”

The room was icy and her hands shook with cold. She held the sheet of paper in her left hand and her ring slipped down to the knuckle. She scribbled the address and went back out.

“You know I won’t call.” His voice was as frigid as the house.

“I know.”

 

The air inside the study smelt of a heady mix of Mulder and his life. Familiar yet oddly new. The poster was still over his desk and she suppressed a smile. Despite everything. Because of everything. It still held them together, this credo. Whatever it was they were chasing or moving away from, it was the need to believe that bound them both in their own ways.

“Are you ready, Scully?”

“For what?” The quaver in her voice gave away her nerves. She instinctively reached for the cross around her neck.

“These…these things I’m about to show you. I’m not sure how you’ll react.” He held her gaze and she dropped the necklace. Its cool weight against her skin kept her in check as her heart beat at double time.

He’s asking me to believe in him, she thought. He still needs that. “Then let’s just get on with it.”

***

He reached a box down from the top shelf of the cabinet and placed it on the desk. He removed the lid and flicked his eyes at the contents and then towards her. She stepped forward. Inside were reams of papers each containing drawings. Portraits. Of William. Sketches of him as a baby, taken from the few photos they’d kept, and then of an older toddler, a child, a boy, a teenager. She pulled them out, spreading them across the desk. A fist in her stomach clenching at her guts and forcing her to suck in painful breaths.

“I’m sorry,” he said, helping her put some of the drawings back in the box. He pulled one up, a baby sketch, and held it in front of them. “I did the first one and after that I couldn’t stop. I spent hours and hours drawing him, it was like a possession. Some days I drew non-stop, no food, barely anything to drink, just me and my pencils and the paper, scratching out the pictures in my head. Even when my hand cramped so that I couldn’t hold the pencil anymore, I could still see his face. I saw him grow and change. It became all I knew how to do.

“I wanted you to see them, Scully. I can’t really explain it but I believe this is what he looks like. It’s like I had to reach the very bottom and when I did my mind opened up to receive these images from him. Like he was guiding me, somehow. And I feel that’s how we’ll find him now.”

She blew out a heavy breath. “All that time in here and I thought you were doing research or writing, but you’re telling me now that you were telepathically receiving images of our son.” She put the lid back on the box.

“And I couldn’t tell you. You would have had me committed even earlier.”

She looked down at her feet. “I had no choice.”

“I know that. And in a way I was glad you did it. It needed to happen.”

“I wish you would have told me, Mulder. I needed something to hang on to. Some small glimmer of hope. Perhaps this would have been it. He is the one tangible thing that we will always be bound by. Our flesh and blood.”

He nodded. “But I knew it would be too painful for you. You didn’t see it how I did. You’ve always been able to compartmentalise your life. Categorise your thoughts and the past. I don’t operate that way. These sketches merged past and present and future. The more I drew the more I felt it was a message, but I was too ill to be able to process it in any meaningful way. I was so mad at you. So full of venom and it just became something for me to keep to myself. My secret. And the darker my life became the more I relished having it. I can actually remember thinking that it was something I could store away for when I needed to hurt you.” He hung his head a moment and reached out a hand to hers. “Sorry. I just want to get things out in the open.”

“But you never showed me. You didn’t hurt me with them, Mulder.”

“No, I did that in a lot of other ways.”

She squeezed his hand. She shivered slightly as she processed the strength of his fingers in hers. The familiarity of this touch. “I think we both did some damage.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth. His lips were warm and applied just the right amount pressure to make her skin tingle. “This looks so bare.” He kissed her ring finger.

“Mulder…”

“You can’t deny it, Scully. Whatever damage we do to each other it’s never enough to kill it.”

“We work together again. We’re talking without fighting. We’ve eaten dinner together. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’ll never be enough. You know that.” His breathing was heavy now, his eyes wide and shiny. “We’re married, Scully. We have a son. That makes us family. He’s out there. When we find him, what will you tell him about us? About his family?”

She shook her head. “This is too much, Mulder. I have to go.”

“You’re running again.”

“I’m not running.” But her voice was tight. She saw the corners of his mouth twitch, knowing he’d exposed her. “I’ll see you at work.” She turned to go.

“I still have it.” His tone was bordering on desperate.

“Mulder, I can’t…”

“You left it with the address of that hotel. Did you know I flew to Houston? I put my ring back on and I took your ring and I flew out the next day and stayed in the same hotel. I was going to propose to you all over again. I had this crazy idea that if I could get you to say yes again that we could erase what came before and start all over.”

Always looking forward.

“But I saw you in the lobby, with your colleagues and peers. You looked so alive. You laughed. I hadn’t seen you laugh for such a long time. You looked beautiful. And I knew I couldn’t offer you anything that would make you happy like that.”

“Oh, Mulder. I left the ring because I couldn’t fulfil the promises we’d made. I was living a lie. I promised to for better or for worse and I let you down.” She was crying now.

“But it was me, Scully. I was punishing myself for my failures and I was happy to drag you along for the guilt trip. Look at me now, Dr Scully. See what you’ve made me become. See how your decisions have affected me? Don’t we make a fine couple? Always ready to hurt one another. I backed you into a corner and then blamed you for being caught there.” He choked out an ironic laugh.

“You talk about me giving up, running away from the past,” she sniffed and fiddled with the cuffs of her blouse. “And I think there’s an element of truth in that theory, Mulder. I did give up. I failed not just you, but us, and I’m not sure that there’s a way back from there.”

“We can find the way back. Through the work. It’s already happening. You can feel it too. We’re stepping back towards the light.” He touched her cheek, rubbing away the tears that were sticky on her skin. “And Scully, whatever you do, however far you run, I will always love you. And I know that the same is true of you.”

“It’s not enough, Mulder. Love is not enough. We’ve proven that.”

He put a finger on her mouth. “But that’s not all we have, Scully. We have William. He’s out there. He is the truth. He is our chance…”

“For what, Mulder?”

“For a future.”

She pulled back, afraid that the hammering of her heart was being fuelled by something more than guilt or fear. But she couldn’t leave. She was rooted to the spot, transfixed by the sketches, trying to process what was happening. Mulder pulled her to him after a while, enveloping her in a gentle embrace. She smelt his cologne, bristled as the edges of his hair tickled her face, felt his fingers massaging the back of her ribcage. Her heart slowed. She breathed him in. A thousand sparks of memory ignited. She pulled him tighter and he responded by lifting his head up and placing his lips against hers. Chaste, tentative, searching for a response from her. She put her hand on the nape of his neck and pulled him down. When he released her she felt the absence of him like a pain in her heart.

He turned to open the top desk drawer. He pulled out a small, dark red box, opened the lid and handed her the simple gold band. “For better or for worse, Scully.”


End file.
